


homemade dynamite

by tootsonnewts



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Like, M/M, accidental rivals, alternate universe - the boys never met in barcelona, otabek just can't get it right, strangers to enemies to strangers to rivals to friends for like three hours to lovers, the chattiest most ridiculous sex, there's sex in this btw, victor and yuuri have the patience of saints, we all have a good time and go home, yuri is a goddamn mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 17:38:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12392874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tootsonnewts/pseuds/tootsonnewts
Summary: That isn’t to say that he doesn’t still have the occasional tendency to sink back into his prickly ways. He still has his days, however few and far between they may be, where his flair for the dramatic rears its ugly head and takes over his faculties for reasoning.Unfortunately enough, today happens to be one of them. When he looks back on this day, he’ll remember it as the beginning of an entire year of troubles that nobody should ever have had to endure.or, yuri and otabek run headlong into the most ridiculous year of their lives.





	homemade dynamite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imagines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/gifts).



> i'm going to be honest with you, this almost didn't see the light of day. but then, i gave away some fics on tumblr, and when [mei](https://meimagino.tumblr.com/) won one, she encouraged me to finish it when i told her about the smut. if it weren't for her, this lil baby would've languished in my drafts forever. so, thanks girl, and i hope you like it! ily so much!
> 
> also, my longest yeah boy ever to [tori](http://thoughtsappear.tumblr.com/)/[thoughtsappear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear) for beta reading this story for me. she always comes in clutch with the best insight and helps check my adverb addiction. thanks, boo!
> 
> story title is [homemade dynamite by lorde](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG0vGmHs3NE). please listen to it. i'm begging you.

There’s something soothing about the blast of cold that hits his body when he first enters the rink. It feels like a coming home, like being scraped clean and hollow and being refilled with only ice to run through his veins. If he stops to think about it for too long, Yuri would probably say that it’s the most real he ever feels. Which is sort of depressing. So he doesn’t.

The truth is it’s the same for them all. He assumes it is, anyway. None of them would actually be there if they didn’t want to be, so they all must view the ice as their collective mother much the same as he does (maybe not to such an overwhelming degree, but he would bet that the feeling is there in shades). Perhaps that is why he feels so passionately about his craft, why he tears his performances from the core of his soul and finishes each presentation with only the husk of his body left to him.

It used to be that he would find motivation in confrontation. He would allow the pressure of competition, speculation, adversarial situations, and the constant rushing of hormones to throw him into the headspace he needed to crush all those in his path. He would rant and rave, throw off his layers, and storm the ice like so much a child soldier, ready for battle but unsteady in his soul.

At one time, Yuri  _ was _ very much a child – temperamental, quick to anger, standoffish, easy to fluster. Now that he has spent time settling into his being and into the new bones that growth has granted him, he can see the whole of himself much more clearly. He sees how he fits into the world, how the world fits into him. These days, he’s much easier and free with his attention and interactions. He’s friendly enough with everyone, and has made genuine connections with multiple people, both in his sport and out.

It was a strange transition for him, becoming sociable. Granted, it’s a side effect of growing up, but in a sport where your expiration date and expectations are thrown at you not from a distance, but rather presented to you on a silver platter from the moment you step on the ice, these changes occur at a much more rapid pace than they normally would if left to nature. One day, Yuri was a cranky fifteen-year-old champion, and the next, he was an achy seventeen-year-old runner-up who decided to  _ try _ . A year later, he finds himself an eighteen-year-old young man with genuine friends and support from all sides, and a new hunger – the hunger to make them all proud, rather than just him.

The motivation of winning simply to win began to fade into the background, but the thrumming desire to be the best version of himself grew ever larger and more present. In days past, he withdrew, containing his intensity and longing inside his own obsidian core. Now, he spreads it outward, offering welcome and encouragement to those he loves. The fire of competition still burns through him, but he’s learned to channel it in more productive ways, to keep the warmth from eating him alive and scorching all who wander into his path.

That isn’t to say that he doesn’t still have the occasional tendency to sink back into his prickly ways. He still has his days, however few and far between they may be, where his flair for the dramatic rears its ugly head and takes over his faculties for reasoning.

Unfortunately enough, today happens to be one of them. When he looks back on this day, he’ll remember it as the beginning of an entire year of troubles that nobody should ever have had to endure.

Yuri knows that something is off the moment he opens his eyes. As he stares up at the ceiling of his hotel room, mentally preparing himself for the fifteen hours ahead of him, he can feel the heavy weight of self-doubt blooming in his chest. He doesn’t often get nervous, but it had been a year of working to reclaim himself after (what he hoped would be) his final growth spurt for some time. Now that the moment of truth is here, he’s not entirely sure how to feel about it.

Katsuki once described his anxiety to Yuri as a shadow that clung to his mind, shifting and changing as the light struck it from new angles. Although Yuri didn’t have to deal with it the way Katsuki did, he fully understood now what it meant to have such a foreign feeling taking up permanent residence in his head. It was uncomfortable. It was him but not him, and it was impossible to scrub away.

Sitting up in the over-hot comforter of his over-plush bed, he does his best to push the feeling away and work through his morning stretches. He guides his body through its motions, taking the time to scroll through his phone, sending the usual morning texts, going through his social media, answering emails, and watching the most recent video of his own performances to make mental adjustments.

A hot shower helps to work out some more of the aches and pains in his body and mind, but the mood, he can tell, is going to be one of those all day affairs he tends to lose hours to. It’s one of those things that usually drives him to silence, a clear signal to those closest to him that he’s going through it again. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have those closest to him around for this particular competition. Katsuki had a family emergency crop up last minute, and because marriage is apparently an important thing to honor, Victor flew to Japan help him through it.

Overall, Yuri enjoyed taking Victor on as a coach, even if learning to share him with Katsuki was a strange adjustment. They had long since become like brothers, and their closeness helped Yuri get past his awkward teenage years and come out relatively unscathed. Victor understood the growth spurts, both mental and physical, and helped him to push through. He drove Yuri harder than almost anyone, pushing him to his limits and beyond, which he would be endlessly grateful for until his dying day.

Not only was Victor instrumental in his growth as a skater, but he was also instrumental in his growth as a man. It took some time to admit, but Yuri learned a great deal from Victor’s experiences in life, and Victor was only too happy to help him achieve more than he ever could have without the influence. Yuri enrolled in college courses because of him (his grades were always high – he was nothing if not a perfectionist – but college as a concept never totally appealed to him until the day Victor asked what his life plan was and Yuri found himself without an answer). He found a calling outside of skating for when his inevitable time came to retire, and he was working toward that goal slowly but surely. When Yuri lost his grandfather a year ago, Victor was there to walk him through it and be a shoulder to lean on.

Needless to say, whenever Yuri hit one of these patches, Victor could always be counted on to help him find the other side. Without him, Yuri was fine, but it was a much more difficult task to wade through the shallows of his mind and pull himself to shore. Victor had a talent for saying just the right ridiculous thing to shock his system into a full reset and help snap him out of a funk, and that talent was sorely missed when it was gone.

  
  


+++

  
  


As Yuri exits the cab he took to the arena, he runs into the usual press pool and finds himself surrounded by hungry sports journalists looking to get their next big scoop. He does his best to handle them with grace, giving terse, vague answers, but after a short time the interactions leave him exhausted and he excuses himself to head into the building.

Navigating the hallways, Yuri keeps his gaze focused ahead and only speaks when spoken to. He acknowledges those who greet him with as much enthusiasm as he can wrangle from within, even if it isn’t as genuine as normal. It takes him a little longer than usual to find the locker room, and when he does, he automatically narrows his tunnel vision on the depths of his assigned locker so that he can change and get out to the ice to warm up as quickly as possible.

After changing and running through his warm-up stretches, Yuri does a quick jog of the back areas of the arena, trying to work himself into the right mental state for his skate. It proves tougher than normal, so to try and help pull himself out of it, he decides to join the other skaters in the waiting room to watch each routine. He drew last slot in the order so he has a while to wait, and he figures that at least watching other programs might light the spark inside him.

When the last skater to perform before him finally takes the ice, Yuri has to wrack his brain to remember exactly when Otabek Altin arrived and why he hadn’t noticed.

As Yuri stares at the vaguely familiar (and admittedly handsome) face on the television screen, he remembers catching a glimpse of that undercut flitting on the edges of his attention every now and again in past competitions. He doesn’t recall seeing him often, maybe once or twice. He knows who he is, of course. He knows who everyone on the circuit is out of necessity. He’s simply never interacted with the guy (not on purpose, really, they’ve just been assigned to so few of the same events, and Victor or Mila or some other member of Team Russia usually commandeer Yuri’s attention whenever they’re at competitions).

By the time he takes the ice, Yuri’s already put the thought out of his mind. He’s managed to snap out of whatever funk he fell into by virtue of waiting it out, but he’s still feeling a little weird. All night, it’s felt like he’s had a strange weight at his back, which compounded by the lack of his usual emotional outlet, has left him a little disoriented.

When he takes his starting position and casts his gaze around a final time, his attention is momentarily grabbed by a pair of dark eyes watching him from the boards.

  
  


+++

  
  


_ “You were distracted today.” _

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Victor sighs on the other end of the phone line.

_ “Did you sleep last night, Yura?” _

“Yes, asshole, I slept!”

_ “Did you sleep  _ **_well_ ** _?” _

“I mean, well enough I guess.”

_ “So no.” _

“Look, I slept, okay? It’s just, I woke up in one of those moods again and you aren’t here, and I get  _ why _ , of course I do, alright, it was just-”

_ “You needed me.” _

Yuri is grateful that they’re able to say these things to each other now with no issues. There’s no judgment from Victor when he points out Yuri’s problems. No pressure, no teasing, just a plain statement of fact. Yuuri’s been good for the both of them, he thinks.

“I-yeah. It’s okay, though, I swear! I can do this. I was just weird today, that’s all.”

There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line while Victor  _ hummmm _ s his way to a conclusion.

_ “Well, if you can make it through tomorrow acceptably, then we’ll be fine with lower scores. You’re still you, my little fire ant! We can still pull ahead!” _

And just like that, they’re back to normal.

“Look, shithead, how many times do I have to tell you, DON’T” –Yuri’s startled out of his oncoming rant by a little jingle in his ear telling him he has an instagram message notification– “ugh, hold on a second.”

Victor doesn’t hold on a second. He keeps talking while Yuri takes a look at his screen to see who the message is from. He frowns a bit when he opens his inbox to see

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Hello. _

 

“Huh.”

_ “Yura?” _

Yuri closes the app and puts the phone back up to his ear.  “Yeah, hi, I’m back.”

_ “Well? Anything interesting enough to ignore your coach over?” _

“I don’t know yet. How is Yuuri?”

Victor launches into an extremely lengthy and overly detailed description of Yuuri’s very molecular state at the moment, Yuri half-listening while he considers what the message from Otabek is about.

He doesn’t answer.

  
  


+++

  
  


Yuri spends the morning between programs in his hotel room sleeping and catching up on some reading he had promised himself he’d do and just kept putting off. Fortunately enough, it was just what he needed to pull himself out of his funk.

In the afternoon, feeling refreshed and in a much happier mood, he heads out to grab some lunch and walk the city so he can send a few photos to Victor just to assure him that he’s fine and interacting with the world like a well-adjusted human being ( _ ‘Oh, Yura, those ducks look so angry! They remind me of you, my mad little mallard!’ _ ). He grabs coffee from a shop he spots and heads out into a local park, book in hand.

Plopping down on a bench near the center, he tugs his scarf closer to his throat, sets his phone to vibrate, and digs back into the story. He barely makes it a few paragraphs in until his phone starts buzzing from his pocket, pulling him out of a world of elves and wizards. Sighing, he tucks his book under his leg and checks it, only to find another instagram message.

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Yuri Plisetsky. _

 

Well, yeah, that is his name.

 

> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ Well spotted. _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ We are skating in the same competition this weekend. _
> 
> _ Are we not? _
> 
> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ I feel like you already know that we are… _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ I do. _

 

Fantastic. Now that’s been established.

 

> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _...So is there a reason you’re messaging to confirm something we both already know? _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Yes. _

 

Without his book to distract him, Yuri realizes just how chilly it is outside. He gathers his things and sets out to return to his nice, warm hotel bed. On the way, he can’t help but check his phone every few minutes to see if he has an answer, but none comes.

After getting back to his room and changing into a pair of sweats, he throws himself into bed and grabs for his phone, tired of waiting.

 

> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ … _
> 
> _ You gonna tell me that reason? _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Perhaps. _

 

Well that’s just rude.

At some point, Yuri slips into sleep without realizing and is awoken by the sound of his phone buzzing its way across the bed and onto the floor. He cracks an eye open, only to be blinded by a ray of light making its way into his room through the curtains he forgot to close the previous day.

“FUCK!”

Panicking, Yuri launches from the bed and scoops up his phone. He misses the phone call (from Victor,  _ double fuck _ ), but checks the screen and breathes a sigh of relief when he finds that he still has forty minutes until he needs to leave for the arena.

He throws his hair up in a messy bun, heads for the bathroom, and calls Victor on speaker.

_ “My cranky little croissant!” _

“Fuck off, Victor, we’re not even French.”

_ “Ahh, and you seem to be just as pleasant as ever today!” _

“I just woke up.”

_“Hmmmm, you’re not doing a great job of proving that yesterday’s mood was_ ** _yesterday’s_** _mood.”_

Yuri spits his mouthful of toothpaste out.

“I’m fine, okay?! I took a walk yesterday and cleared my head. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

_ “So am I hearing that you’re fine?” _

Yuri groans into the phone.

_ “Well, hopefully your long program today will prove it!” _

“Oh, c’mon. Cut me a break.”

_ “Only champions get breaks, Yura!” _

Yuri closes his eyes and envisions Victor’s death. It’s messy. It’s painful. It’s wonderful.

“I’m getting in the shower now. Bye.”

  
  


+++

  
  


Because of his score in the short, Yuri skates third. Like he promised Victor, he manages to pull his head out of his ass enough to skate his highest score of the season for his long program. Unfortunately enough for him, it’s not enough to help him pull completely ahead. He takes silver to Otabek Altin’s gold.

Otabek’s program, Yuri admits to himself, is a thing of beauty. It’s smooth, powerful, and strong. His jumps are in a class of their own. It makes sense, really. He doesn’t seem quite as flexible as most skaters, so he would need to make up the shortcoming somewhere. With legs like he has, jumps are the most practical place.

The closer they get to the end of the night, however, the more curious Yuri becomes. He still doesn’t know why Otabek sent him that message, and Otabek never explained. Maybe he’ll find out at the medal ceremony, maybe Otabek will seek him out.

That, it turns out, is wishful thinking. They stand at center ice with Guang Hong Ji, and neither of them says a damn word. It’s honestly the most frustrated Yuri’s felt in some time. He does his best to nonchalantly throw looks at Otabek to get his attention, but he’s too busy standing stock-still and looking like his pants are on fire to notice.

As soon as the ceremony ends, Yuri hightails it out of the rink toward the locker room.

Once he’s back in more comfortable clothes, he calls a cab and heads out front to wait. He’s in the middle of a cat-collecting game when his phone buzzes with a text from Guang Hong:

**_hey! a bunch of us are grabbing dinner tonight if u wanna come! ^_^_ **

Yuri’s stomach chooses that precise moment to gurgle up at him pleadingly, and he laughs at the reminder of his own stubborn mortality.

**Yeah, sure. What time?**

**_we’re going at 10! i’ll send you the address. <3_ **

**Okay, sounds good.**

**_btw, otabek is going to be there...you know, in case that’s a problem. >_>_ **

**I don’t understand. Why would that be a problem?**

**_you know, cuz you guys don’t like each other… <_<_ **

Yuri is very confused until a picture comes through at the same time his cab pulls up. It’s a screenshot from the Yuri’s Angels twitter page. Of course it’s a screenshot from the Yuri’s Angels twitter page. Yuri climbs in the back and directs his driver while it loads. Settling back into the seat, he wakes his phone to take a look, and what he sees makes him reconsider his policy of not throwing phones anymore.

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 10m
> 
> _ Uh oh! Looks like our favorite kitten has himself an enemy! #watchoutyuri _

 

Below the sentence sit two pictures, one of Yuri at center ice, smiling and waving with his eyes narrowed in Otabek’s direction, and the other of Otabek returning the favor.

Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic.

**Ugh, no. It’s not like that.**

**_...that sounds fake, but okay yuri. don’t worry, i’ll run interference for you tonight!_ ** **_(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ_ **

**That’s really not necessary, but thanks Guang Hong.**

**_any time! see you soon! <3<3<3_ **

Yuri sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. The very last thing he needs is the rumor that he’s in some sort of rivalry. A rumor on the internet is a rumor that gets huge, and a rumor that gets huge is a rumor that Victor would be most unhappy with. Not to mention the fact that it would make Yuri’s life much more difficult.

But it’s no big deal. He’ll just talk to Otabek at dinner, smooth things over, and bada bing bada boom, rumor squashed.

Except, because nothing can ever go Yuri’s way, the universe decides she has other plans.

When Yuri arrives at the restaurant to meet everyone, he’s already twenty minutes late. He rushes into the cacophonous back room full of skaters and their coaches and cringes a little when he sweeps his eyes over the table just to realize that there’s only one seat left. Next to Otabek.

It’s fine. This is fine. He has to talk to him anyway. This’ll just...speed up the process.

Everyone cheers and waves as he throws himself into a seat and grabs a menu from the center of the table. After throwing out the necessary greetings and small talk, he sets to work choosing what he wants to order. He’s in the middle of deciding between the alfredo and pizza when Otabek clears his throat.

“You were late getting here.”

Yuri stops reading and turns his head, meeting Otabek’s expressionless gaze.

“Yeah, well, sorry dad. I got held up.”

“I’m not your father.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

Otabek looks at him for a few seconds and returns to his own menu.

Yuri blinks in confusion, but a tap on his shoulder pulls his attention over to Guang Hong, who smiles gently and casually brings him into his conversation.

Later, when everyone has finished eating and laughter rules the table, Otabek clears his throat beside Yuri again.

“You skated well today.”

Yuri looks at him properly this time.

“Thank you. So did you.”

“Yes, first place seems to insinuate it.”

What the fuck.

“What the fuck.”

Otabek looks taken aback by his own words, at least.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I, um. I just meant you did well today, considering.”

Yuri can already tell where this is heading. It’s like footage of a car wreck. He already knows the outcome, he wants to scrub through the messy bits in the middle to check for survivors at the end, but he just can’t. Instead he sits there, numb, as the whole scene plays out before him.

“What do you mean, ‘ _ considering _ ’?” he asks against his better judgment.

“Well, you had a bad season last year. I’m assuming because of growth? I know you performed poorly. I just wanted to compliment you on trying to return to form.”

“Trying to return to form,” Yuri grits out. He briefly remembers a time many months ago when Yuuri tried to teach him breathing techniques for the few times his anger still spirals out of control. He breathes in for five seconds. Holds it for five seconds. Breathes out for five seconds. Pauses. Breathes in for fiv-

“Yes. You’ve shown improvement.”

Fuck breathing exercises.

“ALRIGHT, YOU DICK,” Yuri shouts and hops up from the table. The room freezes around them, but Yuri can’t even appreciate it because he’s so busy focusing in on Otabek, gaping up at him like a fish out of water. He leans in dangerously close, hissing through his teeth, “I’ve tried  _ very hard _ to figure out what your deal is. I think I’ve been pretty pleasant. Don’t you think I’ve been pretty pleasant?”

Otabek opens his mouth to say something, but Yuri cuts him off. “No! That wasn’t a question for you to answer! I don’t know where you get off being so condescending, but you can  _ rest assured _ that I’ll wipe away any reason for you to be that way next time I see you!”

Yuri knows when to make a dramatic exit. This is about as dramatic as it gets. He high-tails it out of the restaurant before anyone can make a move.

His phone buzzes during the cab ride back to his hotel.

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Yuri, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. _
> 
> _ I’m _
> 
> _ I’m not too good with words. _
> 
> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ Look man, what you said was about as insulting as it gets. _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ I know. _
> 
> _ I didn’t word it how I meant to say it. _
> 
> _ Please forgive me. _
> 
> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ Whatever. We’ll call it a truce. _
> 
> _ We’ll just ignore each other from now on and leave well enough alone. _
> 
> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _...Yes. I understand. _

  
  


+++

  
  


The rest of the season proceeds, blessedly, without incident. Months pass by, and Yuri and Otabek come across each other often at qualifiers and events – much more than Yuri ever remembers them seeing each other before (although Yuri makes sure to watch every single routine Otabek performs, if only to keep an eye on his competition). Perhaps this is just Murphy really law-ing it up, but it strikes him as a little unfair.

Their truce holds out, though. Yuri gives Otabek even more space than he did before (which is impressive, he thinks, considering the fact that they never even interacted before Otabek dragged Yuri’s basest doubts out into the harsh light of an Italian restaurant), and Otabek grants him the silence he requested the night of their kind-of-but-not-really-an-argument-argument.

They both qualify to compete at Worlds, Yuri overwhelmingly so, and this knowledge brings with it a deep desire to rub Otabek’s face in his improvement. Whether he intended to or not, Otabek sparked a new urge in Yuri to climb higher than he ever had before when pointed out the very flaws that laid him at his lowest. Yuri isn’t afraid to admit the irony in that, but he’s grateful to accept the success brought on by it.

Yuri knows he can be a little petty by nature. Truthfully, he sometimes wonders if that’s just a requirement of being a member of the Russian skating team. They all kind of have the same tendencies to err toward the dramatic and do things just because people tell them they can’t. Maybe it’s that innate pettiness that fuels him just as much as his desire to prove himself.

Either way, he feels vindicated when he steps into the arena on the day of the short programs and immediately locks eyes with the very person who’s haunted his recent victories. Otabek is quick to look away and head into the locker room. This makes Yuri feel even better.

Rationally, he knows they officially buried this long ago. It’s silly to keep dwelling on it, honestly. But it was such a sensitive topic, and even though his forgiveness was granted when requested, he still can’t forget. Elephants and grudges and all that. Although, comparing himself to an elephant doesn’t feel all that charitable toward his own self-esteem at present.

“You gonna be okay out there?” Victor’s hand lands on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

He lets out a long breath so he can really consider the question before he answers, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just have to prove it to myself, y’know?”

Victor smiles in understanding. It’s not the kind of smile he wears when he knows he’s lying to Yuri (and  _ Yuri _ knows he’s lying to Yuri), but he’s trying to be convincing anyway. It’s the real one. The supportive one. The one he saves for when Yuri needs it most.

“You’ll be great. Yuratchka, I’m so proud of you.”

Yuri isn’t one for public displays of affection, so it surprises both of them when he swoops forward to trap Victor in a tight hug.

“Thank you, Vitya.”

Victor pats him on the head. “Of course, my salty little seahorse!”

Back to equilibrium.

The rest of the afternoon passes normally enough for Yuri. He stretches, he warms up, he listens to Victor give him last minute corrections, and finally, he takes the ice.

His program goes perfectly.

He’s spent the last long year of his life working hard to get back to some sort of skater that resembles what he once was. And yeah, he knows he’ll never be fifteen again, crafted out of rubber and cockiness and spite. But to be able to take to the ice and feel strong, and powerful, and  _ capable _ again is a blessing almost too strong to bear.

He ends the night in first place and sobs in Victor’s arms in the back of the cab they take to their hotel.

They get back to their room and Victor’s phone rings with a call from Katsuki, so Yuri takes the opportunity to hop in the hottest shower he can stand.

When he gets out, Victor’s still on the phone, which isn’t that unusual, but he’s speaking in soft, slow tones, which  _ is _ . Yuri pads back into the bedroom proper and gives him a curious look. In return, he gets a wobbly smile and a mouthed  _ almost done _ . That’s…Not Good.

Victor finally hangs up the phone, but as soon as he does, the joy leaves his eyes.

“Otabek Altin.”

Yuri’s never been the type of person to appeal to any sort of deity, but, “Oh my god, please. PLEASE,” he pleads to the ceiling, arms outstretched.

Victor’s expression melts into a fond sort of amusement. He clears his throat and continues, “I know what happened at that qualifier a few months back, but is that all?”

“Ugh, yes old man. You know I’d tell you if anything else happened.”

Victor stills, looking contemplative. His phone buzzes in his hand, and when he reads the message, his fingers automatically find their way to his chin in the way they so often do when he’s considering his next action. He reads for a few minutes, and then looks solemnly up at Yuri.

“Please, Yura. Tell me the truth.”

That hurts. Yuri thought they were long past hiding anything but his most personal business, but the look in Victor’s eyes is suspicious and Yuri needs to know what’s on that phone.

“Victor,” he starts. “Victor, I don’t know what’s going on, but we squashed that whole thing just like I told you.”

Victor holds his phone out, opened up to the Yuri’s Angels twitter page. Of course it’s opened up to the Yuri’s Angels twitter page.

“Does Otabek know that?”

Yuri looks at the screen.

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 10m
> 
> _ Rivalry CONFIRMED! In a recent interview, Otabek Altin states that Yuri is “competent enough competitor” #rude #stepoff _

 

Attached to the tweet is a link to an article by a local newspaper about the competition. Lo and behold, there’s a snippet of an interview with Otabek included. It reads:

 

_ INTERVIEWER _ _ : You know there have been some rumors recently that you and Yuri Plisetsky are less than friendly with each other outside the rink. Care to comment? _

_ OTABEK ALTIN _ _ : I don’t comment on personal matters, sorry. _

_ INTERVIEWER _ _ : Yes, that makes sense. But this does pertain to skating in a way, don’t you think? _

_ OTABEK ALTIN _ _ : I suppose. Look, Yuri is a competent enough competitor. I don’t need to discuss this. _

 

Yuri sees red.

  
  


+++

  
  


Yuri awakens the next day feeling less angry, but betrayed all the same. He’s never been in a situation like this before and the more it sits within him, the sicker it makes him feel. The walls of the hotel room feel just a little bit closer every time he takes a breath, and it’s not something he can take for much longer. In fact, it’s not something he can take any longer at all.

He throws on some clothes, grabs his wallet and cell phone and heads out into the city to take his mind off of things. Before he forgets, he shoots a quick text off to Victor to let him know he’ll be out, then he silences his phone and starts walking.

Yuri’s favorite thing about his sport has always been the travel. He doesn’t always have time to do things like this, but when he actually does, he revels in the feeling of getting lost in the streets. Technology being what it is, he has no worries of finding his way back, but for a few hours, he can pretend that he’s lost all connection to his own world and just  _ breathe _ .

Each new side street, each new store, each photo of a street cat – they all bring him a new piece of the quilt of his own history that he slowly stitches over time. He sometimes wonders if he’ll ever finish it and find a wall to hang it on permanently. That’s a little flowery, and he’s very young still, but the more he grows and the closer to his inevitable retirement he skates, the more the thought comes calling at his mind.

These thoughts distract Yuri enough to keep him from paying attention to where he’s going, and before he knows it, he’s strolling through the middle of a riverside market. The air is dense and salty from the water, the chill bites harshly at his cheeks, and it’s the closest he’s felt to home in a long time. He closes his eyes, turning his face into the early spring sun.

He’s so busy bathing in the soft morning light that he barely notices the sharp, triplet gasps from behind him. A tap on his shoulder rouses him, and when he looks around, standing before him are three Angels, all decked out in their Yuri Plisetsky fan club finest.

“Ladies,” he says, smiling. “Good morning.”

Three eardrum-shattering squeals answer him, followed by a deluge of excited chatter.

“We thought it was you!”

“Oh, Yuri you look so nice in regular clothes!”

“We’re so excited to see you skate!”

“If you win tomorrow, what-“

“We  _ know  _ you’re gonna win tomorrow!”

“ANYWAY, how are you gonna celebr-“

“What’s the deal with you and Otabek Altin?! Why are you guys enemies?!”

Identical gasps escape the other two girls.

“Oh my god Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re enemies!”

Yuri sucks in a deep breath. Patience, he reminds himself, is of utmost importance when dealing with his fans. They’re all young and detached from the intricacies of his everyday life. They don’t understand the politics of sport. They all think it’s just about skating well and looking nice and flashing Vaseline-teeth-smiles. These sorts of things require delicacy. Dealing with his fans requires delicacy.

“We’re not enemies, dammit!”

He tried.

“What?!”

“You’re not?!”

“Does  _ Otabek _ know that?”

Yuri decides, at that very moment, that child-induced déjà vu is an experience of the most unpleasant kind.

“What do you mean?” he asks as sweetly as he can.

“Well, um,” the one named Karen asks sheepishly, “have you seen his latest interview?”

Yuri swallows thickly. He can’t handle any more bullshit. He really can’t.

“No. No, I haven’t.”

“Oh, uhhhh,” the mousiest of the trio pulls up a video on her phone. “Here.”

She clicks  _ play _ and Yuri watches as a video of Otabek begins. It’s one of the post-routine interviews they get subjected to, and by the looks of it, Otabek had just stepped off the ice.

_ The interviewer smiles at him. “Otabek Altin of Kazakhstan! That was an incredible skate just now! How are you feeling?” _

_ “I’m feeling great about it, thank you,” he answers, smiling softly at her. _

_ “You should! With a score like that, you give Yuri Plisetsky a run for his money!” she chirps, gaze sharpening. _

_ Otabek tenses, clearly sensing the danger heading his way. _

_ “Speaking of Plisetsky,” she continues, “there have been rumors for a long time now-“ _

_ Otabek cuts her off, “There needn’t be.” _

_ Smiling patiently, she continues, “So you two aren’t rivals at all? You get along just fine?” _

_ Otabek looks directly into the camera and grits out, “We don’t speak. We skate. That does enough talking for the both of us.” _

Yuri quirks a brow as the video ends and passes the phone back to the girl.

“He’s not wrong, you know. Our skating is what we’re here for.”

The girls glance at each other.

“That’s true, and you’re the best!” one says. “But, that’s not everything.”

Oh god. He knows better. He really does. He can’t help himself.

“Oh, it’s not?” he asks.

The girl cracks a smile. “I can’t believe I get to show you this, Yuri! Look at these!”

She opens up the Yuri’s Angels twitter account. Of course she opens up the Yuri’s Angels twitter account.

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 1d
> 
> _ Just look at those faces @Otabek.Altin is sending our precious Kitten’s way!!! #rivals #yuriisthebest _

 

There are several pictures posted in a long chain of tweets, all of them showing Otabek watching Yuri – around the rink, during interviews, as he’s chatting with his teammates, while he stretches in the kiss & cry – eyes narrowed, focus absolute. His expression is dark, if unreadable, but Yuri can suss out what he must be thinking.

Yuri’s mind shorts out. He knows this isn’t the time or place to address this. He knows what will happen if he gives anything even remotely quotable to these girls. He knows what Victor’s reaction will be, how disappointed Yuuri will be, how many texts Mila will send him. He knows it will hurt his reputation if he flies off the handle. He knows. He knows.  _ He knows. _

“THAT MOTHERFUCKER.”

He just doesn’t  _ care _ .

Later, as he strolls back to the hotel, he gets a text from Victor containing a single screenshot. Accompanying the picture, three question marks followed by  **_you were gone for an hour, yura. one. hour._ **

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 15m
> 
> _ EXCLUSIVE! Asked about @Otabek.Altin‘s shenanigans, our precious Kitten says, “THAT MOTHERFUCKER!” #yikes #clawsout _

 

The most popular reply, listed just below the original tweet makes Yuri smile wickedly.

 

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 9m
> 
> _ @YurisAngelsOfficial @Otabek.Altin #yikesindeed _

 

Yuri’s inbox dings with a dm.

 

> **Otabek Altin Official** |  @Otabek.Altin
> 
> _ Yuri. _

 

He deletes the message and heads up to his room for his lecture.

  
  


+++

  
  


Yuri arrives to the rink the next day with fresh promises to Victor and Yuuri that  _ no, he absolutely won’t start anything with Otabek, swear to god, cross my heart, hope to die, etcera etcera, UGHBLEGHWHATEVER. _

The moment he steps through the doors to the locker room, an unnatural hush settles over it, bathing the space in uncomfortable silence and rendering Yuri immobile for the briefest moment. He shakes it off and heads to change into his skates and throw his stuff in a locker.

Passing the partition into the back of the room, he can hear the chatter immediately start back up with a vengeance, and immediately decides to make himself scarce today. He remembers the length of time he was known more for his attitude than his skills, and he absolutely cannot go back there. He’s made so much progress, learned so many new things, he can’t have this situation destroy it for him.

Yuri takes a second, crouching down to the ground and wrapping his arms around his knees. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead into them silently, hoping his outer calm can spread inward. He’s still overwhelmingly angry about this whole thing, but he needs to harness it, rein it in, use it as fuel.

Soft footsteps approach from the end of the room, and Yuri lifts his bleary eyes, taking in the slight figure of Yuuri heading his way. Yuri shuffles back a little bit, making room for Yuuri to join him across the floor.

“So,” Yuuri starts.

“So.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Could be better. Could be worse. Still angry mostly?”

“That’s fair.”

Yuuri lets him sit for a minute more, then leans forward, holding out a hand.

“Alright. That’s enough stewing. The only way to prove you’re above this is to  _ be above this _ , Yuri.”

“I don’t know how, Yuuri. I haven’t had to deal with anything like this in so long.”

“Well, can I be honest with you?”

“You’re going to anyway.”

“I don’t really think you’re dealing with it at all.”

“What the hell do you mean?!”

Yuuri takes hold of Yuri’s biceps, giving them a gentle squeeze. “I mean, Yuri, that the two of you haven’t spoken since your fight at that restaurant. Things might not exactly be how you think, you know?”

“Look,” Yuri grits out. “All I know is that I thought we called a truce, and then that asshole went out there saying dumb shit and looking all ready to carve my skin off and wear it like a mask! That’s not trucey behavior!”

Yuuri squeezes again, harder this time. “I know. But I just think talking about the whole thing might help.”

“I can’t. I won’t. He started this, he can finish it.”

Yuuri sighs and drops his arms. “Alright, Yura. If that’s what you think is best.”

After warmups, Yuri pointedly stands rinkside to watch the performances. He’s set to go last, leaving him a while to wait, but it gives him the opportunity to see how much everyone has improved over the season. He cheers when Guang Hong performs flawlessly, gasps when Phichit stumbles over a step sequence he always nails, and smiles when Leo ends his program with a fist raised high in the air.

Finally, Otabek takes the ice. Right before his song begins, he looks to the side of the rink, making direct eye contact with Yuri. His gaze is heavy and hard, and it knocks the breath of out Yuri’s chest. Otabek’s eyebrows furrow momentarily, but then he wipes his face clean of all emotion and takes his starting position.

He’s distracted, Yuri can tell. He’s no less technically flawless and ridiculously powerful, but there’s a blankness behind his skating that Yuri never feels. Typically, Otabek skates like a soldier dropped into war. He’s dressed for battle and ready to perform every maneuver needed to grant total victory.

Otabek’s distraction is cemented for Yuri when he steps out of a jump.

Otabek Altin does not step out of jumps. Ever.

Yuri does the math on the sidelines. Even with the stumble, Otabek has delivered a performance worthy of the highest marks of the night. So far, anyway. Yuri still has to skate. Yuri still has to win. Yuri’s  _ going to win _ .

He passes Otabek when he heads out onto the ice and resolutely looks away, handing his skate guards to Victor who accepts them with a click of his tongue.

Yuri tunes everything out, barely bothers with his greeting laps, and locks himself into his starting position. The music begins, and his mind goes blank.

Four-and-a-half blurry minutes later, Yuri clutches his heaving chest and leaves the ice. Yuuri and Victor wrap him up in their arms, crying and laughing, and Yuri doesn’t get it.

“Was it okay?” he asks, and they both start laughing and crying even harder.

Later that evening, Yuri takes center ice in the gold medal position, with Otabek in silver and Leo in bronze, and he feels vindicated. It’s like all of the stupid, unnecessary tension he’s been through at Otabek’s hands doesn’t matter, because he  _ won _ . He proved his point. He knew he could make a comeback and he did, and no amount of condescension or furtive glances could stop him.

Yuri looks at Otabek. “How’s the view, champ?”

Otabek’s eyes widen a fraction, then his brows furrow just like they did before his skate that night.

“As expected,” he answers slowly.

Yuri sneers and skates away.

That night, Yuri steps out of the shower to a multitude of notifications on his phone. He answers his texts, calls Mila back, uploads a victory photo to instagram, then checks his twitter feed. He snorts at what he finds on the Yuri’s Angels account.

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 20m
> 
> _ He did it again! Our kitten wins gold! #takethatotabek  _

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 15m
> 
> _ EXCLUSIVE! Check out this video of the boys on the podium! Things look pretty tense! #gethimkittem #clawsout _

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 10m
> 
> _ EXCLUSIVE! Check out these photos an Angel sent in of the boys glaring the PANTS off each other! #rivalry #yurisgonnawin _

 

There is one message in his inbox.

 

> **Otabek Altin Official** |  @Otabek.Altin
> 
> _ Yuri. _

 

Yuri blocks Otabek Altin on twitter.

  
  


+++

  
  


After Worlds, Yuri decides that it’s time for a well-needed break. The slow simmer of this strange feud coupled with the stress of the work he put into the season finally catches up to him, body and mind, so he spends three days in bed with his phone turned off.

On the fourth day, he finally feels some semblance of humanity return to him, so he cleans up and turns his phone back on.

As expected these days, he’s flooded with notifications. The most recent is an instagram message from Otabek.

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ It’s not how it looks. _

 

Yuri’s blood starts to boil. He’s getting really tired of dealing with everything, and by the way this message reads, he’s got more to deal with.

He takes a few deep breaths and starts going through a weekend’s worth of messages.

First, he deals with the string of texts Mila sent that morning.

**_yura, this is really something._ **

**_i almost can’t believe it?_ **

**_but there it is, huh?_ **

Yuri has no idea what that means, so before he answers, he moves on. The next conversation is from Yuuri.

**_Yuri, I’m not usually one to say this, but I told you so. You need to talk with that boy immediately. This is getting out of hand._ **

Oh. So it’s definitely another thing. Yuri sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He sends out twin  **_What happened now?_ ** ’s, and flips over to twitter.

Before Mila and Yuuri can answer him, he stumbles onto what they must have been talking about. The Yuri’s Angels account tagged him directly this time. It’s not a good sign.

 

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 10m
> 
> _ Hey, @RealYuriP, we think it’s time you stomped @Otabek.Altin down!!! #rivals #howrude #yuristhebest _

> **_Yuri’s Angels_** _✓_ @YurisAngelsOfficial ** _∙_** 10m
> 
> _ @RealYuriP you really gotta see this! #RUDE #CLAWSOUT _

 

The first tweet links to a video interview with Otabek. The second links to a translated print article from some sports magazine in Kazakhstan.

Yuri starts with the print article.

 

_ TEMIROV _ _ : Your ongoing feud with Yuri Plisetsky- _

_ ALTIN _ _ : There is no feud. _

_ TEMIROV _ _ : That really seems to be the opposite of the truth. It’s a known fact that there is tension between the two of you at every event you both attend. _

_ ALTIN _ _ : I can’t account for that. _

_ TEMIROV _ _ : You agree that there is tension, then? _

_ ALTIN _ _ : I didn’t say that at all. _

_ TEMIROV _ _ : But you didn’t deny it. _

_ ALTIN _ _ : I’d really rather not discuss this. Personal issues between Plisetsky and I can remain personal, as far as I’m concerned. If he has an issue, he knows where to find me. _

 

Okay, what? So now  _ Yuri _ is the one with an issue? Now  _ Yuri _ is the one that needs to address this whole thing? That’s absolutely ridiculous. Yuri’s irritation rises the more he thinks about it, but he figures while he’s here, he might as well watch the interview. It’s a news segment from a sports network. They chatter on about the season that just passed for a bit and then the footage cuts to a rinkside talk with Otabek.

_ The interviewer and Otabek are laughing with each over at the beginning. He says, “Well, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m in Canada!” _

_ Smiling, Otabek replies, “Yes, you really should.” _

_ The interviewer turns serious, ready to get to business. “So, Otabek, you’ve had a very successful season this year.” _

_ “Yes,” Otabek smiles again. “Yes, I have.” _

_ “You’ve also had a very controversial season.” _

Yuri barks out a laugh.

_ Otabek groans and the interviewer laughs a little. “I know, but these are the things the people want to know about! It’s juicy!” _

_ Otabek’s face clouds over. “Look, I get it, I really do, but I don’t want to keep talking about this. I have nothing to say.” _

_ “That’s interesting,” the interviewer picks up, “because it seems like Yuri has acknowledged it himself.” _

_ “Yuri can do whatever he wants, we’re not friends.” _

Yuri rolls his eyes. “No fuckin’ shit, you asshole.”

_ The interviewer perks up and grips his microphone a little tighter. “Oh really?” _

_ Otabek’s face hardens. “Look, all I mean is that Yuri has no responsibility to me. If he wants to play into this, that’s his business. We don’t speak. There’s nothing else to say.” _

“You  _ MOTHERFUCKER _ !” Yuri shouts out to his empty apartment.

He sends a follow-up text to both Mila and Yuuri:  **_I just saw. I’m handling it._ **

His phone rings with a phone call from Victor, but he sends it straight to voicemail and opens up twitter instead.

 

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 5m
> 
> _ This is the last time I’ll discuss this: I did what I set out to do this year. I came back, despite what anyone said. _

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 4m
> 
> _ I know about what’s been happening in the media and that’s not important. What is important is what I did. _

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 3m
> 
> _ I came back out on top after a really tough time, and NOBODY can take that away from me. Recent issues aside, I’m proud. _

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 2m
> 
> _ Other people can say what they choose, but my success speaks for itself. _

> **_Yuri Plisetsky_** _✓_ @RealYuriP ** _∙_** 1m
> 
> _ So put that in your pipe and smoke it. _

 

Yuri’s actually pretty proud of himself. Okay, he definitely made a few snipes, but overall, he thinks the tweets were very mature of him. He gives himself a mental pat on the back. His phone rings again. It’s Victor.

_ “Well, all things considered, you could have cursed his name to the heavens. Small blessings, I guess.” _

“I’m just. I’m just tired of this, Victor.”

_ “Aren’t we all.” _

“That’s not fair. I didn’t start this!”

_ “No, but you can finish it. You’re better than this, Yura.” _

“I don’t  _ want _ to be better than this!”

_ “Sometimes it’s not about what you want.” _

“You think I don’t know that?”

Victor sighs at him. He’s been doing a lot of that these days.

_ “I know. Just-” _

Yuri’s phone chimes with an instagram message.

“Victor, hold on a second.”

Yuri flips open the app. He closes his eyes to ward off the incoming headache.

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ I need to speak with you. In person. _

 

Yuri deletes the message.

  
  


+++

  
  


Summer in Hasetsu charges in with all the grace of a drunken llama on an obstacle course. That is to say, wholly unexpected and not without its charms. Typically, Yuri spends his summers at home with his head in a book and his feet in slippers. This year, however, Victor has decided that what everyone really needed was “a change of scenery, my darling displeased deer!”

Yuri knows better.

Victor just wants to be around Katsuki’s family. Yuri can’t be too upset - he’d really like to see them, too. They’re endlessly warm and welcoming, and even though she’s terrifying, Minako is just the kind of Lilia-style-genius that he needs to help keep him in shape for the next year if he wants to keep his current trajectory.

Yuri finds himself stepping off a bullet train directly into the waiting arms of several Nishigoris and Yuuri’s mother on a warm June day. Victor wastes no time dragging him straight to the rink because time waits for no man, the early bird catches the worm, spring chickens somethingsomethingsomething, and a few other figures of speech that Yuri’s tired soul simply cannot be bothered to connect to his current situation.

Yuri goes through his usual warm-up compulsories, but as he does, he finds his mind drifting away from him. Even though he did what he set out to do and proved to himself what he needed to prove, he realizes that he never really took the time to just...absorb it all. It’s nice to be alone somewhere for a change. There’s nobody else to take up space around him, there are no other distractions to shake him from his focus, and it’s quiet.

It proves to be too quiet. Through the light scratching of his blades over the ice, he really has time to unpack everything that’s happened over the past eight months of his life: several first place wins, reclaiming a traitorous body, being thrown into the craziest feud of all time. Okay, so it’s no  Battle of Thermopylae, but it’s enough to make him feel like his own type of Leonidas. The problem is that he just can’t shake the doubt that feeds a fledgling nervousness within him.

It’s a nauseating kind of feeling, knowing that there’s some sort of bad blood there that he just can’t control. Yes, okay, he could probably reach out the way Otabek has, but he’s spent so much time feeling insulted and angry that he doesn’t even really know where to begin. Does he ask for an explanation? Does he apologize for not answering the messages? Does he really even have to? None of this whole thing really feels like his fault to him, but he’s never been known for his sparkling sense of judgment.

Yuri loses himself to his thoughts enough to not notice Victor joining him mid-ice.

They spend some time doing matching figure-eights until Victor gets tired of waiting and breaks Yuri’s concentration.

“Yura.”

Yuri stumbles out of his lines, but Victor scoops him up before he can hit the ice.

“Yura, you know why I brought you here this summer, right?”

“A thinly veiled excuse to visit your husband’s family and eat food that you could never get away with eating at home.”

“...No. Well yes, but no.”

“Victor,” Yuri growls, pushing his fingers into the bridge of his nose. He’s been doing a lot of that in the past few months and, quite frankly, he’s surprised that he doesn’t have divots in his skin from each repeated pinch.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Victor placates, hand raised between them. “I just thought you could use some time away from the world.”

Yuri drops his hand and peers up at Victor’s face, full of concern and a glimmer of something else he can’t quite identify.

“I also wanted to talk to you about Otabek with nobody else around, so...there’s that.”

“VICTOR.”

“I know, Yura, but it’s gotten way beyond serious now and I just think you really need to talk about it. Out loud. With another person.”

“Like you,” Yuri deadpans.

“Like me!”

Yuri sighs and leaves the ice, sitting down on a bench to pull off his skates. Victor joins him with mirrored actions.

“Yuri,” he asks quietly, “are you happy?”

That gives Yuri pause. It’s not a question anyone has asked him yet. It’s not a question  _ he _ has asked him yet. The answer that immediately swirls through his mind is less than positive.

“I…”

“Yura.” Victor lays his hand on Yuri’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Yuratchka,  _ are you happy _ ?”

Negative events in a person’s life tend to work differently. Growing up poor was like building a house on sand. The house itself was structurally sound, everything was there and accounted for, but it didn’t stand a great chance because the earth was always slowly slipping away from beneath. Even the strongest structures cannot stand on shifting ground. His mother leaving was like removing a weight bearing wall. The house began caving in, little by little, until the sagging roof finally cracked open in the middle and every shift in weather was felt inside. His grandfather dying set fire to it all. Yuri lost himself in the blaze for some time until Victor extended a hand to pull him out, charred and parched, but alive. It took some time, but he was able to rebuild himself, brick by brick, until he could finally be whole again.

This feud, this rivalry, this  _ attention _ is different. It’s slower, more creeping, a different sort of doom that he’s never known. It’s like ivy, the kind that creeps and winds and works its way into slats and windows and joints, slowly pulling apart the structure trapped in its clutches. Every new interview is another leaf, each tweet a tendril, each deleted message a seed. Nobody has weeded it out, so left to its own devices, it’s grown and tugged and sapped away everything beneath. It’s left him drained and tired. Constantly on edge and ready for rest. Dilapidated and small.

“No,” he admits. “I’m not.”

“I know.”

“Great. That’s super helpful. Thank you.”

Victor lets out a small, humorless laugh. “What I mean to say is that no matter how much you deny it, this thing that’s been going on is killing you. You can’t sustain it.”

“I _ know _ , Victor!” Yuri groans in frustration. “I know that.”

“So, when we have an infection, what do we do?”

Yuri looks him dead in the eye, unblinking.

“We kill it.”

Several seconds slip by before Victor lets out a whine and a horrified, “ _ Yura, no. _ ”

“Relax, baldy. I’m just fucking with you.”

Victor’s tension immediately releases and he flashes a manic smile.

“Of course! Of course, Yura! I knew that.” He swallows thickly. “Of course I knew that.”

“Anyway, I know the answer is to cut it out. You have an infection, you cut it out.”

“Exactly!” Victor immediately brightens up. “So how are you going to cut it out?”

“I don’t know that part yet.”

“Well, I’m sure we can figure it out in the next couple weeks!” Victor announces with conviction, smiling warmly.

Yuri’s knows how he’d usually deal with a difficult situation. In the past, the most effective way for him to pretend a thing was  _ not _ a thing was to just...pretend it’s not a thing. Ignore it. Erase it.  _ Cut it out. _ But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore this particular thing. Shit, he’s already failed at that multiple times, so he really can’t even claim to have done it at all. 

By the end of his time in Hasetsu, Yuri finds himself no closer to a solution than he was when he arrived. If anything, he feels even more jumbled up.

Things aren’t helped when Yuri checks his phone one last time before boarding his flight home.

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ I think I’ve been more than patient. You have to hear me out. _

 

If there’s one thing Yuri cannot stand, it’s being told what to do. It still makes him bristle childishly. Yuri doesn’t have to do a goddamn thing that Yuri doesn’t want to do. Yuri blocks Otabek on instagram.

No matter how much Yuri tells himself this is what he wants, though, there’s a needling doubt at the back of his mind. What he really wants is to get past this. He wants this to peter out like so many other uncomfortable things in his life so he can return to normal. He’s so confused and over it all that he doesn’t even know what he wants anymore. He doesn’t like feeling so out of control.

He unblocks Otabek when he takes his seat on the plane. Once he lands and turns his phone back on, he’s immediately met with a new instagram message:

 

> **Otabek.Altin**
> 
> _ Just let me say a few things at the preseason banquet. Can you do that? Please? _
> 
> **RealYuriP**
> 
> _ I don’t know. _

  
  


+++

  
  


The night of the preseason banquet arrives, and with it, the full force of nerves that have been slowly building in Yuri’s gut. He, Yuuri, and Victor dress for the celebration in total silence, the other two sending him concerned glances whenever they think he can’t see.

He assures them all the way down the stairs and into the car that he’ll be fine, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect, so he resigns himself to placating his mother hens until he can prove it.

They walk into the hotel that the banquet is taking place in, and Yuri stops in the lobby, spinning around to face his coaching team.

“Guys, look. This is going to be fine. I’ll behave during dinner and then we can go. Easy peasy.”

Yuuri quirks an eyebrow at him. “Yuri Plisetsky, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Russians, it’s that nothing is ever ‘easy peasy’.” Yuuri punctuates the end of his sentence with twin finger-quotes.

Victor snorts beside them and Yuri smiles.

“Fair point. Either way, I promise I’ll be good. Now go find our seats, I gotta piss.”

Yuri takes off toward the bathroom he spotted on their way in. From behind him, he can hear Victor stage whispering to Yuuri, “Since when did he ever  _ behave _ ?”

Smiling, Yuri rounds the corner into the bathroom and smacks directly into someone’s chest.

“Oh shit, sorry. Excu-” Yuri stops short as he backs up and looks down into the fiery gaze of Otabek Altin.

They stand there in suspended animation for minutes that drag on like days. Yuri scrunches his brows, flexes his knuckles, and does his level best to ignore his twin instincts to tear the roof off the place and take off running. As he stands there considering his options, he zones out a little bit and doesn’t even notice Otabek slowly approaching. It doesn’t matter though, because Otabek’s soft voice breaks him from his contemplation before he can solidify a plan.

“What the fuck.”

Yuri snaps out of his daze, focusing on the fact that Otabek is steps away looking extremely threatening (no matter that Yuri’s got several inches of height on him), and makes a quick decision that if he’s gonna die tonight it sure as hell won’t be in a hotel bathroom. He’d prefer not to die at all, so he engages his very best aura of Fuck You Very Much and prepares to throw down. At the very least, he won’t go out a punk.

“What the fuck do you mean ‘What the fuck’?!”

“I mean what I said. What the fuck.”

Yuri isn’t sure what to say. The entire past year of his life has been an exercise in What-The-Fuckery, and now that he’s finally able to address it, he doesn’t know how. He could just unload. He could ask Otabek what the hell is going through his mind, because the man is a fortress made of flesh and nigh impossible to read. He doubts he’d get a proper answer. He’s not even sure if Otabek  _ has _ a proper answer. Whatever happens though, Yuri would really like for it to not happen here.

“We’re taking this outside,” he snaps and turns on his heel, stalking out of the bathroom, straight through the lobby, and out the front doors. He doesn’t check over his shoulder to make sure Otabek is following; if he’s anything like Yuri thinks, he’ll be determined to finish this quickly, too. Once he gets outside, Yuri rounds the side of the building and whips around to face Otabek, whose face seems as impassive as ever.

“Well?” Yuri spits. “Let’s get this over with.”

Otabek’s face is obscured by shadow as he takes slow, deliberate steps forward. Without realizing it, Yuri finds himself slowly backed against the wall of the building. It was easy to throw himself into his fight or flight bravado, but the detail he seemed to have forgotten was just how terrifying the ‘fight’ portion would be if it were up against this roadblock of a man. He’s by no means huge - he is a skater after all - but he’s muscled in a way that Yuri isn’t with a glare that could level mountains.

Yuri’s back presses into the plaster, his hands at his sides flat against the surface behind him, but he manages to screw his face into a glare even though he’s shaking. He just hopes it’s not visible. Otabek presses further into his space, laying his hands on the wall on either side of his head, hovering just inches away. Yuri can feel his breath on his face as he stares into his narrowed eyes, and for the briefest moment, he wonders if he should be seeing his life flash before him like they talk about in the movies. Because that’s not what’s happening. Instead, his gut is wrenching itself, twisting in all directions and threatening to expel every bit of bile within him.

Otabek is just standing there. Staring. His eyes flick over Yuri’s face as if he’s thinking about a question he isn’t ready to ask yet, and it’s terrifying. His sight dips down to Yuri’s mouth and bounces back up again and Yuri can’t take it anymore. Whatever Otabek is going to do to him needs to happen now, because he can feel himself teetering on the knife-edge of whatever this tension is that’s tightening around them and he needs the fall to happen already. Really, he’s in no position to make demands, but he’s beyond uncomfortable and something’s got to give.

“Are you gonna hit me or not?”

To his credit, Otabek momentarily looks shocked. At least, he looks about as shocked as his face will allow. His eyes widen and his lips twitch the tiniest bit before he seems to realize what he’s doing and sets everything back in place. Unfortunately for Yuri, he remains unmoving, keeping him trapped against the wall.

He snorts in Yuri’s face and murmurs, “Do you even know how…inconvenient the last year has been for me?”

This renders Yuri incredulous. Otabek isn’t the only one who’s been involved in this circus, after all. He’s not the only one who’s been inconvenienced.

“For y- _ FOR YOU _ ?! You’re the one that started all this!”

Otabek takes a step backward, recoiling from the words like a slap. He throws his arms out in exasperation and sighs. “Look. I know we never got off on the right foot. That was definitely my fault. But I never meant to insult you or anything! And then you just kept getting more and more mad at me and I-”

“OF COURSE I KEPT GETTING MAD AT YOU, YOU FUCKING EGGHEAD,” Yuri cuts him off. “Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, I accepted your apology. What you said was fucked up, but I took you at face value. But then you just kept going! I wouldn’t have even known if it weren’t for the Angels cluing me in to everything you were doing!”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Otabek intones, eyes narrowing. “ _ The Angels.” _

“Oh no, you don’t get to say it like that. They showed me everything!”

“They certainly did, didn’t they?”

“What the fuck does  _ that _ mean?!”

“I just think you’ve got it a little confused.”

If there’s anything Yuri has felt over the course of the past year, it certainly hasn’t been confusion. He leans forward from his place on the wall and crosses his arms over his chest, squinting at the other man.

“Confused.”

“Yes,” Otabek says without a hint of doubt. “Everything the Angels showed you, did you really think it was malicious? I’m not the best at saying things the way I mean them, but none of it was like that. People kept bringing it up and I did my best to quash it, I really did, but what did I honestly do to make you think I hate you? That I thought you were my rival?”

“I-“ Yuri cuts himself short. If he thinks about it, just really  _ thinks _ about it, he can’t conjure a single  concrete thing. They haven’t really interacted in nearly a year. Aside from those ignored instagram messages, all of the interaction in this feud of theirs has been conducted with people who were not Otabek. Every picture, every interview, every quote, they could all be taken so many different ways if you stopped to look at them for more than a second. He wonders if he’s just purposely been taking them the wrong way.

“I mean, there were shitty things you said in interviews-”

“I told you I’m not good with words. I never meant those things as an insult. The time I told you it wasn’t how it looked, I was telling the truth. That interview was the sixth one I had done that day, and do you know what they all asked me about? This. I was frustrated and I snapped.”

“I’ve seen all those pictures of you glaring at me and giving me looks.”

“That’s just my face."

“How am I supposed to know that?!”

“I tried to explain! I’ve tried to talk to you for so long and you wouldn’t  _ let me _ ! I never meant to piss you off! I’ve been trying to get closer to you since the very first message I ever sent you! I  _ just _ ...I just think we’re alike is all.”

Now that gives Yuri pause. He can see the gears turning in Otabek’s head as he considers what to do after his admission. The silence stretches on long enough for it to really sink in just how much of an unmitigated ass Yuri has made of himself over the past year. Maybe Otabek is thinking the same thing. He literally just wanted to get to know Yuri, and yeah he was absolutely correct that he’s  _ terrible _ with words, but thinking back on it all, everything he’s ever done has kind of proven that point.

It’s definitely time to put this whole stupid thing to bed. Truthfully, Yuri could have done it ages ago by just answering Otabek’s first message. But he didn’t, and he let it all spiral, and now they’re here. Standing outside a hotel in the dark arguing over the last solid year of their lives.

Making an instant judgment call, Yuri stomps forward with his hand thrust out in front of him. “Fine then. Hello. My name is Yuri Plisetsky. I’m a champion ice skater and your fellow competitor. It’s nice to meet you.”

Otabek’s face lights up in a dazzling smile and he grasps Yuri’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Yuri. I’m Otabek Altin. Turns out I’m a pretty good skater, too. Would you like to grab a cup of coffee with me?”

Yuri releases the breath he didn’t even realize he was holding, a light laugh escaping his lips.

“That sounds nice.”

“Great, there’s a good place down the street. I’ll drive,” Otabek says and starts walking toward the parking garage. Yuri has to jog to catch up, and when he does, he comes to a realization.

“Wait,  _ now _ ? Are you even old enough to rent a car?”

Otabek shoots him a cocky grin. “I’m old enough to rent something, yeah.”

They enter the garage on the bottom floor and Otabek leads him straight to a shining, black motorcycle. Yuri stops in his tracks and glares at him.

“... _ Something _ , huh?”

Otabek smiles and tosses him a helmet.

  
  


+++

  
  


An hour later, Yuri finds himself in a cozy cafe, fingers curled around a hot cup of tea and laughing at a story Otabek is telling him about his friends back home.

“So then after, like, twenty minutes, we realized that there was no way in hell Camran was getting himself down from the tree. So we had to call his father to bring a ladder to get his dumbass son and three cats out of this tree in the middle of the busiest park in the city.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me you guys just sat there  _ watching _ this poor kid battle gravity and cats for an hour until he could get down?”

“I mean, we didn’t just  _ sit there _ . We also walked around. You know, to show him what he was missing out on. And it wasn’t really an hour. It was more like forty minutes. Tops.”

“You’re such a  _ shit _ !” Yuri throws his head back and laughs, and when he looks back down to wipe the tears collecting in his eyes, he realizes that Otabek is watching him with a wide grin on his face.

“What’s with you, asshole?”

Otabek’s smile grows a little softer at the edges. “Nothing. It’s just. It’s really nice when you smile.”

Yuri’s face grows hot and Otabek leans forward over the edge of the table.

“You have a dimple on your left cheek, did you know that?”

Yuri lets loose a low growl and throws his hand up to cover his face, but Otabek snatches it out of the air before it can land.

“Don’t. It’s cute.”

Yuri goes stock-still, and Otabek seems to realize what he said, because he turns just a bit pink and drops Yuri’s hand just as quickly as he grabbed it. Reaching back to rub nervously at his neck, Otabek tosses a look out the window before clearing his throat.

“We should-uh, we should get back, yeah? We’ve already been gone awhile and I’m sure they’re looking for us by now.”

Thankful for the distraction, Yuri furiously nods his head.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be smart.”

See, it’s been a minute since Yuri’s been on a real date, but he thinks that if this were any other time in any other place, then this would have been one. That’s a dangerous position to put himself in with a competitor, no matter how much he likes them. And boy, does he ever like Otabek. Objectively, he’s extremely attractive. Literally anyone with eyes can see that. But beyond that? He’s smart, he’s sharp, his sense of humor is just Yuri’s speed, and he’s got a streak of the right kind of mischief to keep Yuri curious. Yuri immensely regrets all the time he spent not knowing him.

They clamber back on the bike, and as they zip through the city, Yuri lazily hooks his arms around Otabek’s waist to keep steady and thinks  _ yeah, I could get used to this. _

Pulling back into the parking garage, Otabek pulls off his helmet, tosses his hair into place, and levels a very serious gaze Yuri’s way.

“So,” he begins, “since we’re friends now...how do you wanna do this?”

For a while there, Yuri had forgotten all about the stupid rivalry and the fact that everyone and their mother seems to be more tuned into it than the two guys it actually involved. Yuri screws up his face in thought. It really doesn’t matter if they’re friends now, right? Who cares, honestly?

“Okay,” Yuri says, passing back his helmet. “I really don’t think this needs to be a big deal, right? Everyone is always talking about camaraderie and shit, so this should be a good thing, right?”

Otabek snorts into the warm night air. “Correct.”

“So!” Yuri concludes, thrusting a finger in the air. “We roll in there like there’s nothing up and BOOM! We don’t make a big deal, nobody else makes a big deal.”

“That sounds like the opposite of the truth, but sure. We can do that.”

Otabek looks way more amused than he should, but hooks his arm through Yuri’s and tugs him back toward the hotel and its waiting convention hall.

  
  


+++

  
  


Turns out, Yuri was wrong and his new friendship becomes a Very Big Deal.

By the time the banquet nears its end, his phone is down to 13% battery and he has to turn it off due to all the notifications flying in from twitter, instagram, facebook (for some damn reason), and the unending stream of texts from fellow skaters and one very nosy coach. 

Yuri had walked into the banquet room with Otabek, but a few minutes after entering, they split up to make their rounds. So now, Yuri isn’t surprised when Mila manages to stalk and quite literally corner him in the back of the room, hidden by a pretty impressive silk ficus.

“Yuri Plisetsky.”

He loves Mila, he really does. For all her teasing and prodding, she cares about him, and they always do their best to look out for each other. This doesn’t mean, however, that she lacks the capacity to utterly terrify Yuri at any given moment. Like now. Right now. While he’s standing in a corner holding a flute of cheap champagne, unable to get away because her arms are caging him in.

“Mila Babicheva.” He curses himself as the words leave his mouth a little more shaky than he hoped they would.

“It seems to me, and apparently the whole internet, that you have some explaining to do.”

“I have no idea what you mean, Baba.”

“Oh yeah?” she asks, mouth curling up devilishly. “Then I suppose you haven’t turned your phone off to avoid all of  _ this _ , then?”

She thrusts her own phone under his nose, and there - right in front of him in vivid HD color - is the very reason he was, in fact, forced to turn his off.

**THE HERO OF KAZAKHSTAN KIDNAPPED THE FAIRY OF RUSSIA!** reads the headline, followed by several photos of the two of them on their way to the cafe.

“Oh, honestly,” he grumbles. “I’m nineteen! I’m not a fairy, for fucks sake!”

“Not with that mouth, you aren’t,” Mila sing-songs, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

“Oh come the fuck on, Baba.”

She tucks her phone in her bra and throws her arms around Yuri, locking him a steel-trap hug.

“I’m just looking out for my little Yuratchka! I have to keep you safe from predators!”

Yuri sputters into her grip, struggling to push her away. “Mila, he’s not a damn predator! He could have murdered me at any time tonight!”

“Ah, yes. The highest of standards. ‘Could have murdered, didn’t murder.’ I see why you’re friends now, Yura.”

Yuri snorts into her chest, but freezes when she slides her fingers under his chin to lock his gaze onto hers.

“Is that what you are now?” she asks seriously. “You’ve been at each other’s throats for so long, it’s hard to imagine you just being okay now.”

“Mila, it’s really okay, alright?” He tugs her into another hug. “We really did talk it out. It was a whole thing. I’d rather not get into it, honestly. It was just a misunderstanding. A very long misunderstanding. I actually really like him. He’s pretty fucking cool.”

“Okay, then,” she laughs, tucking her head up under his chin. “I trust you, Yura. I just want to make sure you’re fine.”

Yuri smiles into her hair and lets his eyes slide closed. “I’m good. I promise.”

They stand there for a few seconds in their own little world until Yuri feels a faint prickling at the edge of his awareness. He opens his eyes and immediately meets Otabek’s gaze from the other side of the hall. The corner of Otabek’s mouth lifts up a fraction, and before Yuri can do anything, he’s making his way across the room to where he and Mila stand.

When Otabek stops in front of them, casually tucking his hands in his pockets, Mila lets out a low whistle in Yuri’s ear, disentangling herself from his grip and shoving her hand out in front of her.

“Otabek Altin!”

It’s funny, Yuri thinks, how she can say a person’s name and have it mean a full novel’s worth of words. His name sounded downright horrifying rolling from her tongue, while Otabek’s sounds like a sweet spring breeze. The problem is, Yuri knows what it means when she uses that tone. He braces himself for impact.

“I hear you kidnapped our precious fairy this evening.”

Otabek chuckles and takes her hand. “Is it kidnap if I didn’t force him on the bike?”

“I’m right here,” Yuri interjects.

“Well!” Mila says brightly. “I don’t think I need to tell you to be careful with him!”

She tugs Otabek forward by their still clasped hands and whispers something in his ear. She must have switched over to the Death Tone, because Otabek blanches and says, “I would  _ never _ .”

“ _ Still right here _ ,” Yuri complains. Mila dutifully ignores him.

“Great!”

She straightens back up and brushes her hands over Otabek’s shoulders in that way that seems like someone is helping remove lint, but they’re actually letting you know that they’re the grim reaper and your days are numbered.

“See ya, then!”

She flits off into the room with a wink in Yuri’s direction and he immediately wants to die.

“So,” Otabek casually says, pulling Yuri back from the precipice. “The banquet is ending soon.”

“Mmm? Oh, yeah, it is.” Yuri was definitely paying attention, he has no idea why he acted like he wasn’t. If Otabek could tell, he’s gracious enough to pretend he couldn’t.

“You, uh. You wanna hang out some more before we leave?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be cool.”

“Cool.” Otabek almost looks relieved to breathe out the acknowledgement. “There’s a beach nearby, we can chill there for a while.”

A beach is kind of an odd choice, but it  _ is _ getting late, and Otabek definitely seems to know his way around this city better than Yuri.

“Then lead the way.”

When they get to the beach, they find a low stone bench and sink down on it. An hour or so slips by their notice as they talk more about themselves, their childhoods, their skating. It’s weird, Yuri thinks, because there are a rare few people on the planet that he truly connects with, and Otabek pretty much tops them all. They’ve only officially met today, but Yuri feels like they’ve been friends for years.

Even though he’s grown over time, he still has some trouble letting people in. Otabek slid right under his defenses in a matter of hours, and Yuri is grateful. It’s not everyday that anyone makes a friend so easily, he’s fairly certain. Although, none of their interactions thus far seem to be purely friendship-driven. There’s been a weird tension swimming around just below the surface, and Yuri knows they both feel it.

“-and anyway, dating’s never been a huge priority for me?”

Yuri realizes he’s been distracted for a couple minutes and pulls himself out of it.

“Sorry, what?”

“Relationships. We were talking about relationships.”

“Ah, yeah, sorry. Kinda zoned out there. Anyway, I’m not much of a dater. Some hookups here and there, but nothing serious.”

“Hmm. Same here. Too busy?”

“Yeah. That and it kinda seems like the people that are into me are always the type of people I’m  _ not _ really into, you know? That sounds vain, but I hope it makes sense?” He looks out over the water to maybepossibly _ hopefully _ avoid the awkward judgemental staring he expects. Instead, Otabek leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees and peering toward the ocean, too.

“No, it does. Attraction is a weird...thing.”

“Hah, yeah.”

A hush falls over them, punctuated by the lapping of the waves against the shore, gulls crying out into the night, the occasional sputtering of a slow boat’s engine meandering over the waves. It’s a comfortable kind of quiet that feels lush and lived-in. It’s the kind of quiet Yuri remembers sharing with his grandfather at times, full of ease and familiarity. Time slips away from Yuri in illusory waves, stretching and contracting like a rubber band around the moment.

“I prefer blonds, myself.”

It starts raining at the exact moment Yuri whirls his head around to find Otabek’s stare redirected to his face. His eyes are lit up with a fire Yuri hadn’t yet seen, sparking a warmth in his stomach that he desperately tries to tamp down. When Otabek reaches out to tuck an errant strand of his hair behind his ear, Yuri realizes it doesn’t matter and he’s doomed forever.

“We should go before we get soaked,” Otabek says, fingertips still brushing Yuri’s ear.

Yuri swallows and Otabek makes no pretense over watching the movement of his throat.

  
  


+++

  
  


Otabek holds the door open for Yuri as they pass into the hotel lobby. He can feel the tips of his ears reddening as he mutters a quick thanks and passes by, and it only gets worse when a warm hand settles at the small of his back as Otabek follows him inside. The touch disappears just as quickly as it came, leaving him no time to react. They get to the elevator and end up standing there in charged silence.

“Well…thanks,” Yuri grits out awkwardly, “for not punching me. And buying me coffee. And, y’know, stuff.”

Otabek raises an eyebrow and pushes the button to call the elevator, “We’re friends now, right? You can count on me for…stuff.”

Green eyes meet brown, and they both dart their sight away, ramping up the awkwardness by at least several degrees. It’s weird and uncomfortable in a strange way. Yuri knows how these things go, but this is the first time in a while that he’s actually interested in a person beyond a physical sense. He doesn’t want to mess that up.

Yuri wants to bail and maybe take the stairs, but the elevator dings and the doors slide open, and Otabek is gesturing to Yuri  _ no you go ahead _ , and then they’re walking in, and they both reach out for the same floor, and their fingers brush together in front of the button, and they both jerk back like they’d been shocked, and GREAT. This is just great. Yuri was hoping to get some time alone to ruminate on his thoughts of chocolate eyes, biting wit, and laughter that could calm the skies. Now, he gets time to ruminate on all of those things in person in the tightest quarters he can imagine.

Here’s another thing: they’re not just staying on the same floor, they’re staying on the 23 rd floor. Twenty. Third. That’s a lot of rumination.

Once the doors slide shut, snapping Yuri out of his tiny panic, he moves to stand across from Otabek, placing them on each end of the box just watching each other. Otabek looks the very picture of cool, carelessly leaned against the handrail, arms crossed, face relaxed. Yuri already knows how he looks; he can feel all of his muscles pulling themselves heavenward, trying to escape his body through his ears. Also, the walls are mirrored, so he can see how tense he looks. It’s not a great sight.

Yuri closes his eyes to steady himself, and he can hear Otabek huff and take a few steps forward.

“Talk to me, Yuri. What are you thinking?”

Yuri reopens his eyes, and his face must say something earlier than he’s ready to, because Otabek is halfway across the elevator and reaching out before Yuri even realizes what’s happening. The air feels thick and stiflingly hot. Yuri reaches up to move his braid aside and rub at his neck. Otabek tracks every movement with his eyes.

“We’re friends now, right?” Yuri breathes out.

The question leaves his lips before he can think about a follow-up, and he feels it like a magnet, drawing Otabek forward, the space between them shrinking a little bit more.

“I thought we had established that, yes,” Otabek replies, taking the final few steps needed to close the gap.

“So, why–” Yuri looks down at the floor. He weighs the potential consequences of what he’s about to say. It sits heavy on his tongue and slithers down his spine. Fingers brush his chin and he opens his eyes. Otabek doesn’t say anything as his fingers dance across Yuri’s jaw and draw patterns down his neck. Yuri looks up through his lashes and takes a ragged breath.

“That’s not what’s really happening here, is it?”

In an instant, the tension in the elevator snaps. Otabek lunges, pulling Yuri forward by the lapels of his jacket, fisting his hands in the fabric and kissing him with a single-minded ferocity he usually seemed to reserve for the ice.

Yuri’s brain shuts down and he finds himself pushing into the kiss, electricity shooting up along his jaw and radiating through his fingers wherever they touch the other man. Otabek nips Yuri’s lower lip and darts his tongue out to trace his mouth, seeking entrance that Yuri obliges without a second thought. He pushes into Yuri again, gripping him by the hips and crowding him further back into the mirrored wall.

Otabek shifts Yuri up slightly, jostling him against the support handrail, slipping his lips down from Yuri’s mouth to his chin to his throat to his collarbone, just barely peeking out of the button up shirt he wore to the banquet. He shoves his thigh between Yuri’s legs, spreading them apart to rub right into his dick and  _ holy shit _ that’s good.

Yuri gasps out and his mouth is immediately captured right as the dinging sound of their arrival to their floor jars them both out of the moment. Otabek grabs Yuri by the hand and all but drags him through the still-opening doors.

“We’re staying in my room tonight. Hope that’s okay.” He shoots a cocky look over his shoulder that makes every vital organ in Yuri’s body liquefy, and all he can do is dazedly nod in response. Otabek smirks with one side of his mouth. “Good.”

Thirty-two steps later (Yuri counts to distract himself from the most uncomfortable boner of his life), Otabek inserts his room key into the reader and tugs Yuri inside, slamming him up against the door once it closes. He makes quick work of the button and zipper on Yuri’s slacks, and for a brief second, Yuri finds himself jealous of all the people who have lent themselves to Otabek’s education in undressing someone.

That jealousy doesn’t have time to take root, though, because Otabek’s hands are suddenly inside Yuri’s pants pawing at his ass, and Yuri’s leg finds its way around Otabek’s waist, and Otabek’s smiling up at Yuri with wide-blown pupils, and he decides that nobody else on the planet will ever get to see him or Otabek like this ever again.

Otabek slips Yuri’s leg down and presses a kiss to his neck, nipping his skin and mumbling, “I’ll be right back.”

Yuri watches him retreat into the room, throwing open his suitcase and digging around until he comes up with his prize: a clear pouch filled with condoms and lube that he tosses on the bed. It’s rather confident of him, Yuri decides and smirks at the floor.

His task complete, Otabek returns to Yuri in the entryway and stops short, reaching out to hook a finger in his shirt, above the button at his collar. He pulls Yuri forward, slowly smoothing his hands down the fabric, popping open each button along the way. Yuri’s jacket and shirt are shucked off in one smooth motion, kisses pressed to his throat as they go. Calloused fingers wind themselves around Yuri’s body, creeping up under his undershirt and smoothing along his flanks, pulling goosebumps to the surface of his skin.

“What do you want, Yuri? Tell me what you want,” Otabek breathes into Yuri’s neck, warm puffs of air spreading across the skin.

Yuri’s world rearranges itself in a sharp motion. Up to this point, skating has been his entirety. All he ever saw was training and wins and medals, a hectic existence full of paychecks and bills and one-night stands where he could fit them in. But Otabek presents him with new perspective. He’s known the guy for precisely one night, but it feels like he’s been by his side for years. He glimpses a picture of a future he never even considered and suddenly he thirsts for something new. He wants something besides a life of train, skate, travel, repeat. He wants passion, enjoyment, fulfillment, and-

“I want you.”

Otabek’s eyes soften as he catches both the words and their meaning. 

He tugs Yuri further into the room, stopping right in the middle to undress him reverently. Yuri’s undershirt, pants, and underwear are slowly slid off and piled at his feet, Otabek ghosting his fingers along his skin as he works. Yuri closes his eyes, humming at the sensation. Suddenly, it stops. Yuri opens his eyes to find Otabek standing before him, just watching. Looking is nice and all, but that’s not what they’re here for.

Yuri reaches out, grabs Otabek’s tie and tugs harshly, wrapping it around his fist.

He hovers their faces just far enough away to count as not touching and growls out, “I’m naked in front of you and you’re still wearing a goddamn  _ tie _ ,” crushing their mouths together.

Somewhere in between, Otabek’s clothes join Yuri’s on the floor and Yuri finally  _ finally _ sweeps his eyes over the broad expanse of him; his marble-carved shoulders, his perfectly-cut abs, legs beautifully toned and muscular, and a dick that, quite honestly, scares him a little bit. Yuri casts his eyes heavenward for a split second to thank the big man for lookin’ out, and then charges forward.

He takes Otabek by the thighs, lifting him up until he gets the picture and throws his legs around Yuri. Yuri thanks his lucky stars and Lilia for forcing all of the upper body work on him. He may be on the scrawny side, but he’s tall and strong underneath it. Tonight, that’s certainly working in his favor.

Yuri carries Otabek to the bed, tossing him into the sheets and crawling up until they’re chest to chest, heaving breaths between them. He reaches down between their bodies and wraps his hand around Otabek’s cock, drawing a deep, guttural moan from the other man. It’s better than any music he’s ever heard in his life. He wants to bottle the sound and carry it with him wherever he goes. Yuri flicks his wrist from base to tip, dipping his thumb into the slit, and Otabek moans again, back arching off the bed.

“So you know what I want now. What do  _ you _ want?”

Otabek’s face changes in waves. His eyes take a few seconds to focus. His eyebrows raise just a fraction and his mouth slightly opens. His eyes squint and soften. His nostrils flare and relax. The tip of his tongue darts out to moisten kiss-swollen lips. Yuri is so caught up in watching the nuance rippling across his face that he doesn’t notice Otabek reaching into the sheets to grab the lube. He presses the bottle into Yuri’s hand.

“We’re gonna fuck. And then we’re gonna sleep. Then I want to wake up next to you tomorrow and take you to breakfast and talk about what we’re gonna do after that.”

Otabek says the whole thing at the same volume, but the moment the words ‘gonna fuck’ leave his lips, Yuri’s mind dampens out the sound until it’s just a dull murmur in the background. The animalistic portion of his brain takes over, and compels him to grab Otabek by the waist to flip him over, face pressed into the pillows. He tugs him back, lifting his perfect, toned ass up into the air and  _ christ _ , how has he never noticed just how good his ass is before? Otabek props himself up on all fours and throws a heavy-lidded glance over his shoulder directly at Yuri.

Rising to the challenge painted across his face, Yuri dives in, thrusting his mouth forward, nipping and licking across each cheek, drawing breathy incoherencies from the man below him. Yuri brings his hands up to each perfect globe and spreads them apart, exposing the tight pucker between them.

Dropping a quick kiss directly to his asshole, Yuri lubes three fingers on his hand and asks Otabek, “Should I eat you out or just get to business, you think? You have such a pretty ass.”

Otabek growls low in his throat, and throws himself back into Yuri’s face. Well, okay then. Yuri blows a hot breath across the fluttering skin in front of him and kisses it again. As much as he’d like to keep going, this whole escapade was off the cuff with no time to clean up or prepare, so, “You’re going to have to wait for next time for that,” he says, and sinks his fingertip straight inside.

Otabek gasps and pushes back to meet him. Yuri pulls his finger back, teasing around the rim.

“Uhhhh, no, it’s not gonna be that easy.”

Otabek whines,  _ whines _ and pleads, “Please, Yuri. I’ve been waiting so long.”

That’s curious. They’ve not been together but for a few hours tonight, so it really hasn’t been that long since they started this whole...whatever this is. Otabek’s ass pushes back into Yuri’s hand again, and he drops his line of thought in favor of getting back to work. He works his finger into Otabek, searching around until he hears it.

Otabek mewls a filthy cry, and Yuri presses a kiss into his lower back, smirking into his skin.

“Is that it?” He twists his finger, drawing forth another wail. “Is that the spot?”

Otabek whimpers into the pillow and Yuri slowly adds another finger and then another, gliding them in and out, just barely brushing against the sensitive bundle of nerves he finds, until Otabek loosens up around his hand.

Yuri slides up Otabek’s body, one hand still inside of him, one hand coming to wrap loosely around his throat, and whispers in his ear, “I really think you and I are gonna get along well.”

Otabek sucks in a stuttering breath. “I’d say we’re already getting along pretty – ah! – pretty well, Yuri.”

Yuri withdraws his fingers and thrusts his hands in the depths of the sheets. He finds what he’s looking for and lets out a little hum of triumph, flipping Otabek over to face him, legs spread. He tears open the condom with his teeth and rolls it on in one swift motion. Slicking himself up with more lube, he looks Otabek directly in the eyes, drops a kiss to his leg, and says, “Call me Yura,” then pushes in smooth and easy.

Otabek wheezes out, eyelids fluttering and head lolling back against the pillows. Encouraged, Yuri pulls out and slides back in, setting a leisurely pace, even and deep. Enveloped in Otabek’s heat, it’s hard to imagine there being any better place on Earth.

Yuri presses his forehead into the crook of Otabek’s neck, screwing up his eyes against the sweat beginning to drip down his skin. Otabek turns his head toward him and chants his name like a prayer,  _ YuriYuriYuri _ .

Trying his best not to fall apart at the sound, Yuri desperately sucks in much-needed oxygen and reminds him between thrusts, “Yura. Please. Call me. Yura.”

“Y-yuraaa,” Otabek trembles and moans like a porn star, and it’s just about the most distracting thing Yuri has ever heard in his life.

“There’s a good boy,” Yuri kisses him, open-mouthed and filthy, and drives in harder, wrapping his hand around Otabek’s dick.

Otabek keens loud, pushes Yuri off and flips their bodies over, leaning close over Yuri’s face, one hand next to his head and the other reaching down to tug the condom off. He stays there, looking much more serious than necessary, while he collects himself and paws at Yuri’s now-bare cock.

“That’s not how this is gonna go, Yura. I had a plan.”

His face is the very definition of beauty – lips swollen from kissing, cheeks flushed with pleasure, hair sticking up in all directions. He huffs out a low grunt, nosing along Yuri’s jaw, dropping kisses in his wake until he reaches the shell of his ear and bites, sending wildfire through Yuri’s brain.

“You know, I’ve always thought you were the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen,” he says conversationally, as if he wasn’t getting plowed into the mattress two minutes ago, and Yuri hears the soft click of the lube bottle opening again.

“Every time we were at competitions together, I would rehearse what I was going to say to you. How I’d tell you about my crush on you.” His fingers creep between Yuri’s legs and brush down the cleft of his ass.

“But you never really seemed like the kind of guy that would appreciate grand gestures.” The pad of a finger circles his rim and Yuri shudders, stifling a moan as Otabek continues speaking. “And if I’m being totally honest, I’m not the kind of guy that does that sort of thing.”

Nobody has ever spoken to Yuri this way in bed, and from the way he feels electricity shooting through his nerves, he can’t really say that he hates it. The very tip of the finger slips inside him and every bit of air evacuates his lungs, but Otabek just pushes onward as if he doesn’t notice. “Maybe I would figure out a way to just bump into you in the locker room, you know? Just kind of”  — his finger sinks home, immediately brushing against Yuri’s prostate and teasing a cry out of him — “run into you.”

Another fingertip finds its way inside and Yuri swears to god he feels his soul leave his body. They’re nowhere near getting to the most satisfying part of all of this, and Otabek has only been working him for five minutes at most, but Yuri has never felt the desire for time to speed along nearly as intensely as he does now.

The second finger slowly joins the first inside of him and Otabek continues his musing. “So then, I thought maybe I would approach you on your own turf.” His fingers twist and Yuri’s vision goes white, sharp heat and satisfaction coursing through his veins.

“Then this whole ridiculous rivalry thing started and I needed to put a stop to it. That’s why I messaged you on instagram. But you disappointed me, Yura.” His eyes narrow and he pulls his fingers out just to slam them back in, crooking the tips upward into Yuri’s prostate again, sending wild shivers along his spine and drawing a shout from deep within his chest. Yuri scrabbles his hands over the sheets, searching for some kind of purchase against the lack of control he suddenly has over his body, but Otabek scoops up both wrists in one hand and tosses them over his head, holding them down against the pillows.

“You never answered me, though. I know you saw my messages. How do you think that made me”  — a third finger slips in — “feel?”

Yuri can hear himself whimpering, soft and muffled, drool working its way down his face. He knows he must look a mess right now. He’s dripping sweat, he can feel how matted his hair has gotten, and his chest is heaving with the exertion of keeping himself from coming on Otabek’s fingers alone. Otabek looks completely unaffected. His hair is the only thing that’s even remotely tousled now, and Yuri would feel betrayed if he could feel anything aside from the waves of deep pleasure lapping at him.

Otabek hums and takes a break from his weirdly effective pillow-talk, working his fingers in and out of Yuri silently, shooting sparks up his spine and directly into his brain every time he quirks his fingers just right. He drops hot kisses along Yuri’s stomach and up his chest, dragging his tongue and stopping to catch a nipple between teeth. Yuri feels tears forcing themselves out of his eyes and through the haze of sensation, he senses his control wearing woefully thin.

“Otabek, please,” he cries out.

Otabek’s fingers stop moving and he snaps his attention up to Yuri’s face.

“You make me call you Yura and I don’t get a nickname?”

“Please, please, Otabek,” Yuri is  _ not _ the type of person who begs. For anything. Ever. Otabek seems to be the type of person to make him do all sorts of things he doesn’t do though, so he begs, “Pleaseplease _ please _ .”

“Please what,  _ Yura _ ?” He pulls his fingers out, spits in his hand and wraps it around Yuri’s cock, pulling him in long, slow strokes. If Yuri was a lesser man, he thinks he’d be sobbing right about now. He doesn’t know what Otabek wants to be called, and his senses are too frayed to form the words.

Otabek must know, because he pulls back and grabs the bottle of lube from the bed. He makes a big show of adding more to his hand and setting the bottle down on the bedside table before returning his gaze to Yuri and saying, “Beka. You can call me Beka.”

Otabek sits there, expectantly, until Yuri understands and rasps out a small “ _ beka _ .”

He’s rewarded with a joyful, lopsided smile and it’s  _ wonderful _ . Otabek’s fingers return to his ass and it’s so much. It’s  _ too much _ .

“B-beka, c’mon!” Yuri must be dying, he feels like he’s dying, oh god he’s dying. He’s so stimulated and it feels so good, but it’s not what he wants. It’s not enough but it’s too much at the same time and all of his circuits are overloading. He’s on the verge of panic, and he can faintly hear a crinkling noise on the edge of his consciousness, but then warm hands are smoothing down his sides and Otabek is whispering soothing noises in his ear and he’s being kissed again, warm and caring and so, so deep. He feels the head of Otabek’s dick nudging his hole as he lines himself up. Right at the edge of fulfillment, Otabek pauses and looks up.

“Yura, do you still want this?”

Yuri finally snaps.

“IF YOU DON’T FUCK ME RIGHT NOW, YOU WILL NEVER FUCK ME IN YOUR LIFE, OTABEK ALTIN.”

Otabek laughs and brushes the hair back from his forehead. He drops a kiss to Yuri’s nose, then sinks to the hilt inside his ass.

Yuri ascends to a higher plane of existence. Otabek is thick and heavy and  _ just right _ inside of him, and if he wasn’t already so close to coming his entire nervous system out of his body, Yuri would pack his bags and move into this feeling.

“Ffffuuuuck, you’re so tight,” Otabek hisses into Yuri’s chest and works his hips in small circles for a little bit to let him adjust. When he’s obviously lost patience with being patient, Otabek shifts around restlessly, so Yuri pulls himself back and thrusts forward onto his dick, rolling his eyes back and sighing in satisfaction. Otabek laughs again into the darkness and lifts Yuri’s legs, throwing his calves over his shoulders and pistoning his hips forward in a brutal rhythm, hitting him perfectly with every thrust. It’s still not enough. He’s been working Yuri over for so long that he needs an extra push to get there.

The second the thought enters his mind, Otabek’s hand wraps around him.

“Yura, I’m so close,” Otabek whispers in his ear, twisting his hand as he jerks Yuri off in time with his thrusts. He nips Yuri’s earlobe. “I need you to come for me, baby.”

The pet name seals the deal, and Yuri comes with blinding force, coating his own stomach and hitting his chin. A few quick thrusts later, Otabek’s hips stutter and he groans, reaching his own release and riding out the waves of his orgasm with his head on Yuri’s shoulder.

Once he collects himself enough to pull out, he ties off the condom, pads across the room to drop it in the trashcan, and returns to Yuri on the bed with a washcloth he grabbed from somewhere.

“So imagine my surprise,” he continues his earlier conversation, taking Yuri in his arms and wiping him down, as casual as if they didn’t just have mind-shattering sex, “when I run into you in the bathroom, easy as you please, and all of my planning for tonight goes to waste.”

Yuri snorts lightly into his chest.

“Turns out all I had to do to butter you up was get you to yell at me and buy you coffee.”

“FUCK YOU, OTABEK ALTIN.”

“You just did.”

  
  


+++

  
  


Later that summer, they’re sitting in Yuri’s living room watching a movie when Otabek brings it up.

“Okay, so we don’t have to tell people or anything if you don’t want to, but I’d really like to do something to at least put this rivalry bullshit to bed.”

Yuri looks up from his position on the floor between Otabek’s knees, crinkling his eyes in thought.

“Honestly,” Otabek continues, running his fingers through Yuri’s hair, “I kind of want to keep this private for now. I’d enjoy having something for just us for a while, if that makes sense?”

“No,” Yuri starts upright, spinning around to face him straight-on, “it makes sense. After all the shit we’ve dealt with for the last year, I don’t think anyone deserves to know but us.”

“Agreed.”

“So what do we do about it? I have an idea, if you’re okay with it.”

“I’m okay with anything you’re involved with.”

Yuri smiles and reaches for his phone.

  
  


+++

  
  


[ _ an instagram post _ : a photo of the two of them, arms slung around each other. Yuri’s arm is over Otabek’s shoulder, flashing a peace sign into the camera with his tongue poked out. Otabek’s giving a thumbs up into the space between them with a muted smile on his face. A small hickey barely peeks over the collar of his shirt.]

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**RealYuriP** _ @Otabek.Altin _ #rivals

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**BabyBabicheva** YURI PLISETSKY, YOU HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO.

**Author's Note:**

> can u believe the first time i write smut, i just go mcfuckin hard in the paint? who'da thunk?
> 
> like always, you can come find me on [tumblr](http://tootsonnewts.tumblr.com/) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/these_mortals). i'd very much love for you to come yell at me about these BOYS.


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